There’s a Prayer for That, But You Can’t Say It
A Flash Fiction by Richard D. Zboray
Back and forth accusations, loud, fast, reverberating from the gray, distressed house, the one in Edgerton with a broken gutter raised like a questioning brow, was one warning. Another: in what should have been a nearby bush’s consoling shade, troublesome wild gooseberries plonked into last night’s rain puddle that collected in the flung-aside, blue, round kiddie pool, surely the one where Wednesday the two-year, three-month, fifteen-day old girl, Joy, had drowned.
Sweat trickling like a lost centipede down the back of his ear, the air burning hot again under an intense sun, Father Mac swallowed hard, nibbled his lower lip, trudged up the cracked, cement walk dividing patches of dirt, overgrown grass and weeds to the warped wooden planks that served as steps. Old Father Sandeep had sent him as a kindness, assuring him God would provide the words to comfort Lucy, the mother, who, the wrinkled pastor had heard, was one of those who really, really had believed as a kid.
He pressed the doorbell only to hear bursts of “Why didn’t you…” and “It wasn’t my…” and “I told you…,” so loud he pressed again thinking no one had heard. A red-faced woman, Lucy it had to be, still in jammies top and bottom, her uncombed mud brown hair like electrified wires, rushed up close, flung open the screen door, forcing Father Mac’s big, clumsy black shoes back.
Her eyes opened wider and wider as if her long, sharp inhalation was about to pop her. All she saw was that baby-faced stranger’s awful black, black, all black, black shirt, black pants, pure white dog collar and that vision filled her with all the injustice the world had ever known, and filled her and filled until she did explode, thrusting her fist into his face and yelling, “I hate you!”
Trembling, shaking, stunned, rubbing his check, he said, “I’m not God, lady, you hear, only someone sent to comfort you, so can we talk, please, please, because I don’t have any answers but can we just talk and … please?”
Trembling, shaking, stunned, rubbing her fist, Lucy stepped forward, bewildered, stepped down, stepped down again, took a step before he could back off, wrapped her arms around him and together they sobbed, sobbed loud from down deep, down below where no one should ever go, together, because, hey, what else can you do?
Author: Richard D. Zboray’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Blink-Ink and other publications.
Read the interview with Richard to discover the story behind the story…
‘Hey what else can you do?’That first paragraph too every ounce of my breath to read. The intensity was palatable. And I loved how you used the same beginning for the last two paragraphs. Everyone tells you not to use the same word in such a short piece. Shows you what ‘everyone’ knows. Brilliant writing.